Blogs, solar, beef and social media

I used to blog here frequently.

I'm going to post some content tonight, but first I want to explain the lack of productivity on this blog which will also put this blog in the context of all the web avenues I am now communicating on.

When I started Cold Air Currents it was to post articles of interest that I didn't write. One early example of content was Donald Jones' More wind means more risk to the Ontario Electricity Grid. This proved to be a step on the path to the Donald Jones Articles site. Other prominent examples of posts that I did not write are Parker Gallant articles on the financing of MaRS Discovery District, which seemed out of place but needed a home - 2 years prior to the news entering the popular press.

As I became more knowledgeable on energy and tangentially related issues, I tried to add context to the articles I was citing here. This sometimes made it difficult to choose posting on my original Cold Air content blog, or this site.

Citations, without adding context, I have been actively doing on Twitter for some time, and more frequently on Facebook. For many, social media replaces blogging, but I find the experiences very different. Both Facebook and Twitter are social - which it took me quite some time to figure out.  On Facebook my crowd is probably more the anti-wind tribe, and on Twitter likely a little more pro-nuclear. A lot of what interests me doesn't necessarily fit those crowds, but often I don't have the time, or inclination, to put things in the context my tribes already know.

Which brings me to my latest use of social media - the little used Google Plus. I've started to use it as I first used this blog - to hold articles of interest that may end up on this site once I have time to collect a few related articles and create a context/narrative to present them together. If you followed this blog in the hopes of spotting interesting articles, and not for my insights into them, those are most likely to pop up on Twitter amidst a bunch of banter with others, and on Google Plus relatively uncluttered.

Relatively because I have other blogs, and new platforms.

One blog platform I find halfway between blogging and social media is tumblr - which I find particularly easy to create for from my laptop. It could be me ranting, or it could be one graph I've created I think deserves a quick commentary.

I was advised some time ago, to a person near and dear to me, that I am not funny on my blogs - but assured I am a funny guy. I said that was because I have a mean sense of humour and that would detract from my messaging - the unimpressed response was "yeah, well, you're not funny online." So I created a Wordpress blog to stay familiar with that platform (which is more social than Blogger, and the one I recommend for those entering the online content creation world). It is where I intend to be edgier. Having said that, a lot of my best original work has probably been there, on topics I felt hesitant to bring to the Cold Air site that is now associated with "energy blogging" distinct with a heavy data analysis emphasis.

That's most of what I do. If you care to keep track, I always hope I'll do more with luftonline.net but it now exists and points to all these different vehicles.

On to some of the topics in articles I pasted into Google Plus recently...

holding errorists to account

The fifth anniversary of the the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami passed this week.

Stephen Aplin has an extraordinary post on authority - earned and fearmongered

Accurate and inaccurate predictions, garbage dumping, and death threats: an easy lesson about nuclear power, still not learned after 1,827 days

...While I am immensely pleased that nobody has died or even gone to the hospital because of the effects of ionizing radiation released because of the meltdowns (radiation has of course been released, but in amounts simply too small to cause harm to anybody or anything), I have found these past 1,827 days to be rather frustrating. I harbour this naive fantasy that those who were surprised to hear me tell anybody who would listen to expect few if any casualties might revisit their initial surprise.
I understand why they were surprised. I was one of very, very few people saying what I was saying. The vast majority of other commentators on the nuclear situation in Japan following the earthquake were saying just the opposite. They were telling everybody who would listen that there would be untold death and disease because of the release of radiation.
I also understand why these prophets, false prophets I should say, got on the air: from the point of view of a media vehicle locked in mortal hyper-competition with other media vehicles for readers/viewers/listeners, it is much much sexier to prophesy doom and destruction. Reassurance is boring, even if it is bang on. I get that.
What I find disappointing is that the prophets of doom, having been proved laughably wrong, are not being called to account. I mean, they said this stuff in public. You might think that having said things that prove they do not know what they are talking about, somebody might, you know, call them on it.
Apparently such correcting of the public record is not a priority in the current media universe.
It should be. There are real consequences to allowing alleged experts to utter falsehoods in the public sphere.

Please read the full post at Canadian Energy Issues.

The deteriorating era

I attended a concert the other night. Donovon Woods opened for Matt Anderson. I was surprised how few young people were there.

That struck me, particularly as I was with my son, and then today I received a link to the following article from my father - the writer of a post on an historically edgier blog I have, After the boom - what?

From the Guardian, Revealed: the 30-year economic betrayal dragging down Generation Y’s income:

A combination of debt, joblessness, globalisation, demographics and rising house prices is depressing the incomes and prospects of millions of young people across the developed world, resulting in unprecedented inequality between generations.

...Where 30 years ago young adults used to earn more than national averages, now in many countries they have slumped to earning as much as 20% below their average compatriot. Pensioners by comparison have seen income soar.